Buying bulk wheat

So, wheat will stay good for 20 years in storage or more. Id like to start storing pails of it but I havent found a seller outside of mercantile exchanges.

Any online wholesalers you guys know of?

Check with your county extension agent to find out where you can purchase wheat. If he ask why tell him you want to grind your own flour. Make sure it is not treated with any chemical.

Roper

Wheat will spoil quite easily if you dont store it under the proper contitions. If you have the proper conditions you should also consider Rice and Beans along with wheat. Beans provide needed vitamins and iron and are great for storage if kept dry.

[edit on 12-12-2006 by Terapin]

I use 5 gallon stainless corny kegs for bulk dried good storage of grains and dried legumes. You should be able to get them from your local micro-brewheads or online for USD30/ea. "Ball" makes glass-on-glass wire bail, one and two gallon, wide mouth jars that are excellent as well; USD15-20. I also find that big craft stores sometimes have some really good large glass on glass, cheap storage.

Go to your local organic coop / health food store and ask about ordering the bulk wheat. You should be able to get 25 and 50 lb packages of almost any grain. My shelves attest.

Else google "bulk grains organic"

I keep pint or quart jars of every available herb and spice too. You should see my seed collection.

alchemical morman inspired,

Sri Oracle

Research grain storage carefully. I recall Ergotbecoming a problem if incorrectly stored.

I stumbled upon this while researching nearby Salem Ma.

I have worked on a number of farms and have seen grain stored extremely poorly, but have never seen or heard of a modern case of ergot in wheat in the US. But I live in the west, where it's arid. Still, I think the most popular commercial varieties, like TAM 105, etc, are immune to ergot.

The way to store it is with those plastic buckets with tight fitting lids. We stored seed wheat in a "time capsule" by using dry ice. The dry ice sublimates and the CO2 weighs more than the oxygen, and drives it out of the bucket. Most insect eggs will be killed or at least stay dormant.

If you make friends with a farmer, they'll usually give you some for free, or you can pick it up where a grain cart has spilt it.

Even at todays prices, it's only 5$ a bushel--that's sixty pounds!

You can get about 80 loaves of bread out of that bushel, by the way (plus eggs and milk . . .)

I would store enough to plant my front yard in wheat, and plan on GROWING what I needed. It's a grass, after all. If you have enough water, it'll grow in almost every area short of subarctic.

Two bushels an acre will grow a good crop (as long as you get 30" of rain or so a year. plant only one bushel an acre if you are doing dryland in an arid area.) . . . and produce around 20 times that. Wheat is easy to grow; it's just trying to grow it at a profit, where it becomes tricky. growing to feed yourself is really easy, particularly in the US.

Our bulk wheat was in sealed buckets. We got wheat germ, spaghetti noodles ... everything .. in sealed buckets.

BUT .. be careful. Some friends of ours rotated their bulk wheat supply by eating what they had stored and they all ended up with gallbladder problems. They also all ended up having their gallbladders removed because of it.

When it comes time to rotate and eat what is in bulk, be sure to mix it with fresh foods and eat the bulk in small portions or your system could be messed up.

try your local grain elevator, they will give you all you can carry.

Living on a grain farm I can say that you would be hard pressed to store grain for 20+ years.

There is no need to keep it that long. You should replenish every 1 to 2 years.

Its common around here to put grain on the ground in a ring covered with a tarp. It will last through rain and snow with very little spoiling if you have a good base.

And grain is easy to find.

Why not grow your own?